The Commission’s criticism of e-counting and e-voting was scathing; concerning the latter saying that the “security risk involved was significant and unacceptable.” They recommend against further trials until the problems identified are resolved. Quality assurance and planning were found to be inadequate, predominantly stemming from insufficient timescales. In the case of the six e-counting trials, three were abandoned, two were delayed, leaving only one that could be classed as a success. Poor transparency and value for money are also cited as problems. More worryingly, the Commission identify a failure to learn from the lessons of previous pilot programmes.

The reports covering the Bedford trials largely match my personal experience of the count and add some details which were not available to the election observers (in particular, explaining that the reason for some of the system shutdowns was to permit re-configuration of the OCR algorithms, and that due to delays at the printing contractor, no testing with actual ballot papers was performed). One difference is that the Ovum report was more generous than the Commission report regarding the candidate perceptions, saying “Apart from the issue of time, none of the stakeholders questioned the integrity of the system or the results achieved.” This discrepancy could be because the Ovum and Commission representatives left before the midnight call for a recount, by candidates who had lost confidence in the integrity of the results.

There is much more detail to the reports than I have been able to summarise here, so if you are interested in electronic elections, I suggest you read them yourselves.

The review was called for by Secretary of State for California Debra Bowen, it was designed to restore the public’s confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.

The top-to-bottom review of the voting machines certified for use in California in 2007 was to find out if the votes cast by Californians are secure, accurate, reliable, and accessible for reliable audit. Various U.S. security and Cryptro experts where involved with investigations for the review and the results are not particularly promissing…

Hylton Red House Estate Sunderland
The electoral registers for Sunderland North contains incorrect
voter registration numbers printed in the columns alongside voters
names, one particular period from 1958 to 1961 shows that these
numbers cannot be common human error as during this period the
housing estate was covered by two separate electoral wards and
both of these wards show the same and also similar errors in the
voters registration numbers for this one particular estate.